In the wake of Internet activist Aaron Swartz's suicide, there has been much discussion about whether the government is pursuing computer-related crimes with too much vigor - especially when other, more violent and heinous crimes carry lesser sentences.

As a result, Rep. Zoe Lofgren - who represents Silicon Valley - has proposed legislation that would update the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act so that violating terms of service do not carry such hefty sentences.

"The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute," Lofgren, a Democrat, wrote in a thread on Reddit. "It looks like the government used the vague wording of those laws to claim that violating an online service's user agreement or terms of service is a violation of the CFAA and the wire fraud statute."

"Using the law in this way could criminalize many everyday activities and allow for outlandishly severe penalties," she continued. "When our laws need to be modified, Congress has a responsibility to act. A simple way to correct this dangerous legal interpretation is to change the CFAA and the wire fraud statutes to exclude terms of service violations. I will introduce a bill that does exactly that."

Swartz's death came two years after his arrest for allegedly downloading 4.8 million articles from JSTOR, a non-profit archive of academic journals, after tapping into the site from a computer wiring closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Swartz argued - and many agreed with him - that the articles he downloaded and shared were part of humanity's collected knowledge that deserved to be shared freely amongst the scientific community.

But the government didn't agree. Swartz was initially charged with four separate felonies, including wire fraud and theft of information from a computer, which was then expanded to a total of 13, after the charges were separated out by date. All told, Swartz could have spent more than 50 years in prison and faced approximately $4 million in fines if convicted. In the wake of his death, the feds officially dropped the case today.

Lofgren posted a draft of her update to the CFAA - dubbed Aaron's Law - [PDF] on her website. "In coming days, I will seek cosponsors for the bill from both political parties," she said yesterday. "We should prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other Internet users."

The CFAA was first passed in 1986 and has been amended a half dozen times since then, most recently in 2008.

Lofgren's plan earned praise from another Internet activist, Lawrence Lessig. "This is a CRITICALLY important change that would do incredible good," he wrote on the Reddit thread. "The CFAA was the hook for the government's bullying of @aaronsw. This law would remove that hook. In a single line: no longer would it be a felony to breach a contract. Let's get this done for Aaron  now."

Swartz suffered from depression throughout his life, but in a statement, his family said the government's case did not help matters.

"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach," they said. "Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community's most cherished principles."

In a Sunday statement, MIT President L. Rafael Reif said "all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy."

Reif said he has asked Professor Hal Abelson to review "the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made" in regards to Swartz's case "in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took."

"I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it," Reif said.

Over the weekend, a number of researchers and supporters took to Twitter with the #pdftribute hashtag to post links to academic papers  regardless of whether they technically have permission due to the papers' copyrights  as a virtual representation of Swartz's beliefs in the availability of information in the academic world.

About the Author

Before joining PCMag.com, Chloe covered financial IT for Incisive Media in NYC and technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's deg... See Full Bio

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